


Fix You

by Dewsparkle



Series: Little Stories of the Avenging Kind [7]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Jarvis lives, Tony Feels, Tony Fixes things, Tony Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 02:45:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11637318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dewsparkle/pseuds/Dewsparkle
Summary: Tony Stark fixed things. That's just what he did. So why couldn't he fix the one thing he needed most?Inspired by the song "Fix You" by Coldplay





	Fix You

**Author's Note:**

> I was having feels and its 1am. Sorry if it reads weird, I am very tired right now. I hope you like?
> 
> There is also a translation to Chinese courtesy of Isabella here: http://isabellawww.lofter.com/post/1e0a7e58_119f50ce

There had been many things in Tony’s life that he regretted. There have been so many times where no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t seem to get it right. Nothing he does ever seems to be the right thing and someone else always paid the price of his failure.

Many thought Tony Stark had everything. He was rich, he was a genius, he was famous. What more could a person want? He was selfish for wanting anything more, that was just greedy. What he had was not all it was cracked up to be. Being famous and a child genius meant always being in the spotlight. Tony Stark had never known privacy. He’d been in the spotlight since the moment Howard and Maria Stark announced his conception to the media. 

And being rich, well, it was nice to never have to worry about money… but it made people greedy. The first time he’d been kidnapped and held for ransom he’d been five years old at one of Maria’s galas. People pretended to be his friends and the like. It created trust issues. Sometimes Tony wished he could live a simple life. Having everything you could ever want didn't mean you always got what you needed.

He was just so tired. So, so very _tired_. His life just kept dragging him down and down and he couldn’t find the strength to try and shift the weight. He couldn’t sleep, not really, not anymore. Afghanistan. New York. Sokovia… nightmares were endless and his panic attacks had become worse. Normally JARVIS would-.

Tony chokes on a sob and tries to cover his mouth with a shaking hand to muffle the sound. His heart is pounding and he can’t breathe and he can’t see through the wet blur in his eyes. Another broken sound unwillingly rips from his throat.

JARVIS… his JARVIS was gone. Dead. Murdered. JARVIS, who’d he’d built off desperation and loneliness. JARVIS, who sounded like his old butler but was a sassy little brat when he wanted to be. JARVIS, Tony’s closest friend. The only one who’d always been there for him when humans couldn’t deal with his mountain of issues.

Oh god, it was all his fault. He might as well have killed JARVIS himself. If he’d just been more careful… if he’d known the mind stone would attack the program he’d been creating, not even an interface yet…

His face feels very wet and his whole-body shudders and his heart aches in his broken chest.

Gone. Dead. Mutilated. Murdered.

He loved his AI so much, he’d been the closest thing to a child Tony would ever risk having. He couldn’t be a proper father. He didn’t know how. But there was no point now. JARVIS was gone and even if Vision carried his voice, he could _never_ replace Tony’s best friend.

He misses JARVIS so much. He misses gazing at his code with pride and snarking with his AI over stupid, trivial things while he was in his workshop trying to prevent DUM-E from breaking something potentially explosive.

He’d been so lucky to piece him back together the first time, but now it was pointless, he couldn’t… but he had to. He needed JARVIS and Tony would do _anything_ to get him back. It wasn’t fair that he got to live while JARVIS died. Many seemed to think Tony Stark was incapable of love, but no, he just gave it his all when he did. And he wasn’t about to let it go. Not yet. Even if it took the rest of his life, he’d fix this.

It takes so long, but he does it. He finds old bits of code in everything. Most of it is corrupted and unusable, but Tony keeps it anyway. He still wakes up at night alone, screaming and crying and terrified because his JARVIS isn’t there to talk him through it, to tell him about the temperature and the stocks and meaningless things that he doesn’t care about but does anyway because it would be JARVIS’ voice and not the laughter of the Ten Rings as they push his head into the water, or the absence of everything in the portal-.

He couldn’t replace JARVIS. Never could he ever do such a thing, but he would fix this. He fixed things and he took one look at the impossible, sent it a big fuck you and did it anyway because he was Tony Fucking Stark and when he set his mind to something, it would damn well happen eventually.

Tony doesn’t really register the time passing, he just keeps fixing. He was learning who he could trust and who he could rely on all over again. His so called “teammates” didn’t even care that JARVIS was dead. They didn’t seem him as a person. Just a rather very intelligent system, indeed. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes twice. If- when he fixed this, he would make sure this couldn’t- would not ever happen again.

There are tears in his eyes as he runs the code. He doesn’t know how long it been. He’s been fixing for a long time, that’s all he knows. It could be months or days and he wouldn’t know the difference.

It’s taking too long for the code to run, it's going to fail again and more tears of frustration and despair escape exhausted eyes and run like rivers down his cheeks. He growls and swipes his arms across the table and tosses everything on it to the ground with a resounding crash.

Tony falls to his knees, hitting the ground harshly and jarring his spine. He leans forward and presses his forehead to the cool workshop ground and tries to breathe through the panic and desperation and the ever present knowledge that he is a failure and can't even protect the one person he loves because he's just not good enough. He can’t do this, he can’t. He needs JARVIS. He needs- he can’t fix this- why did he have to die? He sobs into his knees and grips his hair and pulls until it hurts. He, he needs... he needs his JARVIS-

 _“Take a deep breath, Sir._ ”


End file.
